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Ruby's sort of a mish-mash of Smalltalk, Perl and Python. It appeals mostly to Perl people who want to do more OO stuff. There's some interesting stuff in there like blocks, but I don't like it myself.

OOP languages and scripting languages are hardly mutually exclusive. FWIW, all their blustering about being full OO is sort of nil since the latest versions of Python, which except for a few expeceptions is as "fully OO" as Ruby.

No, Ruby will never be as popular as Java, because it doesn't have a marketing machine behind it among other things.

Ruby is gaining popularity and fast. Don't forget it languished in Japan for quite some time with a badly translated PDF version of a Japanese O'Reilly book as the only reference. Recently the book "Code Generation in Action" uses it and Martin Fowler is seriously considering using it for his next Enterprise Patterns book. I'm not saying it is going to displace any of the mainstream at the moment, but it has in no way fulfilled it's potential yet.

One thing in it's favour is that as developers move toward fine grain unit testing and test first, strong typing becomes much less useful. Python is hot on the heals of Java for this very reason, it better supports agile development.

Also PHP has found a killer niche from which to grow outwards. In the same way Cobol has never disappeared, I doubt PHP will ever disappear either. Ruby could disappear if it does not find a foothold, but odds are it is a language worth learning.

Then Macus!
Do you think Ruby will never get that rich library that Java or PHP has! Only just that it isn't using in the enterprize so largely ???

I am a new web programming and I was looking for a very good language that I'll learn and improve . I considered PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python and Java. Can you guys give a comparative suggesion to preceed on ?

I personally am not a Ruby fan. I enjoy using Python because I can move from full OOP to procedural easily and I am not tied to the OOP side of things (as with OOP).

I really believe when people look at languages they should look at their needs, preferences, and skillset. I may program Python but to you that may not be the best idea, who knows. You can't find it out until you've tried different things and figured out which one works best for you. Another thing to consider is the availability of the language you are wanting to use. If you are doing web programming, does this particular language cost more to host? Is it even installed on the servers I am looking at?

Research thoroughly the languages that you are interested in and choose the one that works best for you.

Thanks Hart!
Actually I have to develop a online programming contest system..........and after all of your opinions and from other forums threads......at last I concentrated on LAMP..........I think PHP/MySQL will do the job easily and faster than Java.

Well for an online programming contest system I think that PHP/MySQL is probably your best bet. You could also use ASP .NET (C#, VB .NET, etc.) but if you are comfortable with PHP/MySQL then you are set.

I think JSP/Java would be overkill for a system that you are talking about but that is my opinion and I am sure that redemption (member on these boards) would disagree.

from my expirience with java...it is just a pain in the *** to get the simplist thing done. Ya it may have a big library of classes but they sure dont work together in an easy fashion. This may be hartmann's reason for not recommending it, but i cant say for sure. It is my reason though.

Just as a side note. Java hasnt introduced anything great since its release of Servlets/JSP itself and already the design they recommend is very tedious and frustrating to implement.

Since nothing new has come out of the framework in the past few years, I really do believe that it will loose popularity. The speed of Java is very slow for todays applications. Yes it may be cross platform etc. but half the time that doesnt matter.

i almost laughed at that statement. anyways there is no ultimate answer to web development.

PHP/JSP/Servlets/ASP/ASP.NET all do the same thing in the long run. the real question is how do you want to get this done? if you want quick and dirty asp and PHP are your answer. if you want seperation of logic and presentation asp.net is your answer. if you want a structured but slow web application look at jsp/servlets. Just a side note look at http://www.neathosting.net/hartmann/netbenchmark.pdf (i am not trying to say .net is better, I am just trying to show what to expect when running java for a web app)

what you want to look at is the expenses of using .net vs java and how many lines of code of java vs c#.